Disclaimer: this is a review, and as such it contains spoilers of the whole series. Please proceed to read at your own risk if you still plan on watching this show or if you haven’t finished it yet. You have been warned.
Birth of a Beauty
(미녀의 탄생 / Minyeoeui Tansaeng)
MyDramaList rating: 6.5/10
Hello hello! As you may have noticed it’s been almost a month since my last review, and I think I won’t be able to share that many more before the end of the year. My studies are consuming me daily and it’s getting pretty difficult to find time to finish series quickly, let alone spend a whole day on a review. I really hope things will settle down a bit, because I’m definitely going to keep watching and reviewing, but please just note that my life has become increasingly busy in the past few months. With that being said, I finally got to watch this golden oldie from 2014. I’d heard of it and knew it by name, but I’d never gotten around to watch it, and now at least I can say I saw it and I’m excited to share my opinions on it. I ended my last review with the assumption that I’d get frustrated with this one as it’s an older drama with presumably a lot of standard tropes, but much to my surprise I actually wasn’t that annoyed by it at all! Sure, it has typical storylines, occasionally cringy acting and plotholes, but I still thought it exceeded for example the revenge story from Fates and Furies.
Birth of a Beauty is an SBS K-Drama with 21 episodes of about an hour each. I thought 21 was a pretty unique number of episodes, especially because the story took off with such speed from the start. I was curious to see how they’d spread it out over 21 episodes.
The story focusses on the life of Sa Geum Ran (originally played by Ha Jae Sook), a middle-aged housewife. She married into a wealthy family and after her husband had to go to The States soon after their wedding for work reasons, she’s been left to take care of her in-laws’ housekeeping.
While Geum Ran is possibly the most ideal daughter-in-law a family could wish for in terms of loyalty and willingness to work herself to the bone for her in-laws, she does not get any kind of gratitude for it in return. On the contrary, she is ridiculed by her sisters-in-law (Kang Kyung Heon and Jin Ye Sol) for being bigger in size and dressing a bit old-fashionedly, and her mother-in-law (Kim Young Ae) treats her like a typical Cinderella. No matter the amount of work and effort she puts in, she never gets a thank you, and is just taken for granted. The only person who seems to be sympathetic towards her is her father-in-law (Han Jin Hee), as he’s old friends with her own mother, and I also feel like their connection may have played a part in the matchmaking of Geum Ran and her husband in the first place. Anyways, father-in-law is barely at home, he’s running for something or at least building a campaign, so he doesn’t realize how his wife and daughters treat Geum Ran and how much she has to endure. The only person who makes life bearable for Geum Ran in her in-laws’ house is her grandmother-in-law (Kim Young Ok, as always a treasure), who has dementia but who absolutely dotes on Geum Ran.
The most important thing to the story here is that Geum Ran is not considered to be attractive because of her size and fashion style. While trying to remain as optimistic as possible, she finds that her lack of visual appeal definitely obstructs her from certain things in life, and she’s even applied to appear on a TV show that offers a full-body make-over (aka plastic surgery) to try and make her life easier. I think it’s safe to say that in a society like South Korea, outward beauty is considered to be a huge benefit, and especially in old-fashioned K-Dramas we find that people who do not meet these beauty standards, even by being a size larger than the norm, are immediately categorized as ‘unattractive’. Geum Ran is someone who, no matter her vast inner strength and beauty, is only ever judged for the way she looks on the outside, and this immediately makes her the perfect tragic heroine. Despite the nasty things she has to endure, she keeps working herself to the bone for her in-laws as she really loves to cook and clean, and the main thing that keeps her going is the thought of her beloved husband, Lee Kang Joon (played by Jung Gyeo Woon). However, as if she didn’t already have enough to worry about, things start going downhill for Geum Ran even more. Not only does she find out her husband has been back in South Korea for a long time, she also discovers that he’s been having an affair with a younger, skinnier, ‘prettier’ woman for a while as well. What’s more, her mother- and sisters-in-law all knew about this affair and purposely left Geum Ran in the dark about it just to laugh at the unyielding trust she has in her husband. The woman Kang Joon is seeing is Gyo Chae Yeon (played by Wang Ji Hye), a news anchor/talkshow host who works for HBS, the company of which Kang Joon is a director. Geum Ran tries talking to Chae Yeon, but this doesn’t do anything as Chae Yeon has no intention of stepping away from Kang Joon. On the contrary, she ridicules Geum Ran just as much, telling her to take a look in the mirror and ask herself if she really thinks Kang Joon would want to be with her. Then, Kang Joon himself even returns his wedding ring, saying that they should probably stop acting like a married couple altogether.
Despite her considerable physical strength and ability to stay optimistic and positive, this whole mess inevitably (and understandably) drains Geum Ran’s confidence. Her consistent support and work for her husband and his family is only rewarded by being played for a fool by her entire in-law family, including her husband and his mistress. She can’t even tell her own mother about it because she’s too embarrassed. One night, after telling Kang Joon she wants to file for divorce and tell the press about his affair with Chae Yeon (as they’re both influential people and HBS is a big company), Geum Ran heads out in her car in the dark, heavily distressed. Misfortune strikes when, on the way, she gets into a terrible accident – she’s forced to dodge an oncoming car, busts through a safety rail and crashes down into the water below.
All in all, the introduction we get of Geum Ran’s character is meant to create immense sympathy for her and her situation. We see how she’s being treated, how awful her in-laws are to her and how few people she has to lean on, even in her own family. The few people that liked and sympathized with her didn’t add up to the amount of ridicule and scorn she received from everyone else. There wasn’t even any kind of woman-to-woman support, no one thought or even cared about Geum Ran’s feelings. To think that she had to go through all of that just because people didn’t like the way she looked is awful, but it’s also a very important cornerstone of the story. Besides her prior plan to appear on that make-over show, it’s only shown how much Geum Ran believes changing her appearance will help her situation by what she does next. It’s a sad preface, but it also immediately gets to the point of Geum Ran’s determination to immediately change her life for the better, and this is also a powerful indicator of how strong she actually is.
Miraculously, Geum Ran survives the freak incident, and after she’s pulled herself from the water, the first thing she does is visit one of the surgeons from the make-over program to beg him to ‘please make her pretty’. The fact that she apparently knew his contact info even though she wasn’t admitted to the program, and the fact that this was the first thing that popped into her mind after going through such a horrific accident is kind of wild to me. Anyways, she visits that plastic surgeon’s house, but the person who opens the door is actually not the surgeon himself. It’s Han Tae Hee (played by Joo Sang Wook), the adopted brother of the surgeon, who’s just crashing at his place for the time being. For some reason I still don’t really get, he pretends that he is the doctor she’s looking for and he agrees to help her out. He ‘designs’ Geum Ran’s new appearance based on ‘the ultimate beauty’ according to Korean visual aesthetics standards. After getting his surgeon brother to perform the procedure under the radar (did he fly him in for this? I’m still not sure how this happened exactly), Geum Ran (now played by Han Ye Seul) is unrecognizable. Going by the new name of Sara to shape her new identity, she gets to live the life of a beautiful woman who turns heads wherever she goes. After the initial high of her new appearance, Sara joins forces with Tae Hee to set a following plan in motion. After all, she didn’t just get full-body plastic surgery to look pretty and move on with her life. She wants revenge.
Tae Hee, who is initially kind of an enigma as he pretends to be a doctor and doesn’t share his true identity, is actually the heir of a big corporation called Winner Group. His grandmother, Mrs. Park (Kim Yong Rim) is the CEO. When he was ten years old, his parents perished in a horrific warehouse explosion. Tae Hee managed to escape and while wandering around a highway, he was picked up by a friendly man. The man took him into his own house and made him part of his family, and that is how Tae Hee grew up with his two children: Ji Hoon, the plastic surgeon (played by In Gyo Jin) and, oh yes, Chae Yeon. He grew up as an older brother to Gyo Chae Yeon, the very woman Geum Ran’s husband cheated on her with. What’s more, Tae Hee has developed more than just brotherly feelings for Chae Yeon. While Chae Yeon has been aware of his feelings she never responded to them, probably to protect the close bond they had as near-siblings. In any case, Tae Hee is not happy with the relationship and approaching engagement between Chae Yeon and Kang Joon (which happens mere days after Geum Ran’s disappearance). Not only because of his own feelings for Chae Yeon, but also because he just doesn’t trust Kang Joon, and these suspicions are only strengthened when he hears Geum Ran’s story.
In summary, Geum Ran/Sara and Tae Hee discover that they have a common goal in wanting to break Kang Joon and Chae Yeon apart. Geum Ran wants to give Chae Yeon a taste of her own medicine, and Tae Hee doesn’t want Chae Yeon near Kang Joon after learning about how much of a jerk he is.
While Sara’s initial plan is to seduce Kang Joon with her newly acquired outward beauty and win him back, punishing Chae Yeon in the process, things start changing rapidly as more and more information comes out about the true nature of Geum Ran’s ‘accident’. While it takes almost no effort to be liked and invited in by Kang Joon’s family and Sara gradually makes her way into Kang Joon’s life again, she encounters a few very painful truths. For one, she overhears her (ex-)in-laws shamelessly talk about Geum Ran, badmouthing her even after she’s gone and presumed dead. She also has to witness them treat her own mother like trash when she comes asking questions about what happened to her daughter. And, worst of all: she finds out that the car that made her swerve and burst through that safety rail was driven by no one other than Kang Joon himself, and that it was a deliberate attempt to murder her. She also finds out that Chae Yeon saw the whole thing happen and did nothing to help her either. Naturally, this discovery also makes Tae Hee reconsider his feelings about Chae Yeon, and he starts sympathizing and siding with Sara more and more as they gather more intel.
While only Kang Joon and Chae Yeon ‘know’ what really happened to Geum Ran, her (ex-)in-laws (except for the father) don’t seem to care one bit about the fact that Geum Ran probably died. They may not have known about Kang Joon’s direct involvement yet at this point, but they still keep talking down on their (ex-)daughter/sister-in-law, and Sara is there to hear and witness all of it.
As a result, the plan changes from winning Kang Joon back to destroying him. While continuously acting out new plans to interfere with the relationship/engagement/marriage between Kang Joon and Chae Yeon (I still can’t believe they got married three weeks after Geum Ran’s ‘death’), Sara and Tae Hee get closer through their teamwork and eventually develop romantic feelings for each other.
However, just when they feel like their revenge has played out successfully and they prepare themselves to move on with their own lives, Kang Joon and Chae Yeon start getting suspicious themselves about the relationship between Sara and Tae Hee. First simply about how they know each other, but then even more when they discover the two are actually living together. From then on, Kang Joon and Chae Yeon, while hating each other’s guts at that point, start their own counter-revenge plans to find out the truth about this mysterious Sara woman who turned up to mess up their lives, ultimately taking revenge back on the people who took revenge on them. Still following?😆
In the midst of this complicated double-revenge plan, there is yet another player who wishes to contribute to the downfall of Tae Hee, in particular. What Tae Hee doesn’t know is that the explosion that killed his parents was supposed to kill him too, as it was a deliberate attack to get rid of the original Winner Group heirs. This was all orchestrated by a woman called Son Ji Sook (Kim Chung), who had an illegitimate child by Tae Hee’s father after getting him drunk one night. Mrs. Park never acknowledged her as a daughter-in-law (I mean, she took sexual advantage of her son after all) and this has triggered a strong feeling of revenge in Ji Sook. After Mrs. Park turned her and her illegitimate son away, Ji Sook used her past romantic connection to one of Mrs. Park’s trusted men, Kim Joon Chul (Choi Jong Hwan), and pressed him into executing the explosion. Now, the illegitimate son, Tae Hee’s half-brother Han Min Hyuk (played by Han Sang Jin) is the Director of Strategic Planning at Winner Group and he’s planning to become the new CEO. Taking advantage of Mrs. Park’s grieved absence as she’s looking for her still-missing grandson, Min Hyuk and his mother start planning their way to the top, as they have now gained enough power to silence Mrs. Park. When Tae Hee finally comes back to reveal that he is the lost heir of Winner Group, Min Hyuk and his mother keep trying to find ways to get rid of him, including assault and attempted murder.
Basically, we can distinguish three main storylines: the revenge plan of Sara and Tae Hee, the counter-revenge plan of Kang Joon and Chae Yeon, and the quest for Winner Group of Min Hyuk and his mother. These three storylines are entwined as all characters get involved with each other throughout the story. One aspect of old-fashioned dramas is that the way everyone is connected is always quite intricate and complicated, so I’ll try to explain it as best as I can.
First we have Geum Ran, who is initially involved with Kang Joon, her husband, his family, and Chae Yeon, the woman her husband cheated on her with. She gets involved with Tae Hee when he helps her to transform into Sara. Other than that, there’s Geum Ran’s mother Shim Yeo Ok (Lee Jong Nam) who’s old friends with Kang Joon’s father, and her best friend Eun Kyung Joo (Shim Yi Young).
Tae Hee first of all has ties to Winner Group, as his grandmother is the CEO and he is put in charge of the sub-branch Winner Food when he returns to the company. He has ties to Ji Hoon and Chae Yeon as he was raised as part of their family, and he is related to Min Hyuk and Son Ji Sook, not just in family terms, but also because Min Hyuk is after his family’s company.
Kang Joon is a director at HBS, and he knows Min Hyuk because HBS is planned to merge with (or take over) Winner Group. He is originally tied to Geum Ran and Chae Yeon, and then is seduced by Sara. When he first learns of Sara’s involvement with Tae Hee, he starts conspiring against Tae Hee with Min Hyuk, and when he finds out the truth about who Sara really is, he also starts intimidating her as well as her mother.
Chae Yeon is a well-known face from TV. She’s mostly involved with Kang Joon and her two brothers Tae Hee and Ji Hoon. She first decides to get back at Sara for stealing Kang Joon away from her, but after finding out Sara is Geum Ran, she goes on to get back at Geum Ran for ‘ruining her life’. She starts manipulating people, including Mrs. Park, so they’ll turn on Sara.
Min Hyuk falls in love with Sara pretty much at first sight, even before he knows she’s involved with Tae Hee. He gets Sara opportunities to work as a model for Winner Group and as a chef, getting her to appear on the popular cooking competition show ‘Birth of a Chef’.
Min Hyuk’s mother Son Ji Sook is involved with Tae Hee’s family and Kim Joon Chul, whom she uses as a pawn to take revenge on Mrs. Park for not accepting her into the Winner Group family. She aids Min Hyuk in his plans to become the new Winner Group CEO.
One important thing that I want to elaborate on is the way in which Sara gets involved in the feud between Tae Hee and Min Hyuk. Because of her new exceptional and outstanding beauty, Sara often gets noticed and recognized by people in public, and it happens frequently that people just start filming her while she’s eating somewhere. Not only do they film her without her consent, they even release the videos online where they go viral and Sara becomes famous as a kind of ‘mysterious mukbang beauty’. I guess it’s the way her beauty shines even more when she’s enjoying food which makes these videos stand out so much, but I still think it’s disrespectful to just start filming someone in their private time without their consent. In any case, this is where Min Hyuk first encounters her as well, as he recognizes her face from those videos when he sees her in real life and becomes interested in her. After getting to know her a bit better and learning about her passion for food and cooking, he plays a significant part in getting her on that cooking competition, so Sara owes him a lot of gratitude for that opportunity. As he becomes more greedy to keep her to himself, he eventually even starts punishing her for remaining loyal to Tae Hee by orchestrating several assaults on him. It gets pretty intense.
Honestly, Min Hyuk felt like a distraction to me because he just turned up as Suitor No.3 besides Tae Hee and Kang Joon, and Sara already had her hands full with everything else going on. Min Hyuk started pursuing Sara without being aware of the whole Geum Ran situation, basically barging his way into her life. The way he just started showing up at places where she was with bouquets of flowers, being all ‘we keep meeting, this must be destiny’ while Sara was like, ‘sorry, who are you?’ made him seem a little delusional, even. She was just being friendly because he was friendly to her, she never gave any indication of reciprocated romantic feelings, and yet he became so obsessed with her that he even started threatening Tae Hee’s life if she wouldn’t stay away from him. Super romantic, dude. I don’t know what it was with men in this story, but every one of them seemed to at least have several violent tendencies. I still find it worrying how Min Hyuk just started planning Tae Hee’s murder with his mom with that glint of excitement in his eye, and how he got so happy at that shareholders’ meeting in the final episode because he thought Tae Hee was dead.
In any case, as Min Hyuk was the farthest removed from the main storyline, I just immediately dismissed him as a potential love rival, and this was only strengthened by that fact that there were already too many men that Sara had to deal with in her life.
Going on about Sara, honestly, can we just acknowledge how much shit she was dealt? Not only as Geum Ran, but even as Sara? After Chae Yeon started turning people against her, she was basically bombarded with people threatening or blackmailing her, telling her to stay away from Tae Hee and gaslighting her into thinking that she was making everyone’s lives worse. If there’s one trope I hate that did appear in this show, it’s the one in which the tragic heroine, the female lead who has every right in the world to be happy, gets gaslighted into believing she’s the source of the world’s misery. This was also the case for Sara, and I wished she’d communicated with Tae Hee better, especially during this part. Because I don’t think Tae Hee was actually even aware of a majority of the things she had to endure. It was so stupid that everyone put everything on Sara, everyone only ever came to Sara to tell her that she needed to leave Tae Hee because she was putting him in danger, but no one ever had the guts to go to Tae Hee and tell him that he needed to get away from Sara. Sara just became the recipient of all the scorn and that wasn’t fair. It was like she was being punished for trying to stand up for herself, for trying to be genuinely happy for once in her life. Seeing what she was facing, I don’t even blame her for stepping away from it for a while to at least protect Tae Hee, but I still think she could’ve communicated it to him better instead of just pushing him away without any real explanation. It only caused Tae Hee to become desperate and neglect his Winner Food work. She could’ve told him the truth and then they could’ve started pretending they broke up while still secretly keeping each up to date. Sara could’ve started gathering intel on Min Hyuk’s true motives while working her way up in his favor. But no, they didn’t even communicate about how Min Hyuk was Tae Hee’s enemy. As a result, Min Hyuk started using Sara in trying to make Tae Hee believe she’d switched sides, creating even more cracks in the trust between them.
I think this was the only part during the series where I was a bit frustrated with Sara, because it just seemed like she didn’t have a clue what she was getting herself into. She’d broken up with Tae Hee because people kept telling her she was putting him in danger, but then it was like the plan just stopped from there, and when she finally discovered Min Hyuk was the evil mastermind behind the attacks on Tae Hee, she just froze as she didn’t know what to do.
On the other hand, I loved Sara most when she was in complete control of her situation. Her character development was really consistent and I liked that it started from the outside (dealing with her past and changing her appearance) and ended in her becoming so strong on the inside that she didn’t even care about hiding her true identity anymore. She learned to embrace herself as Geum Ran, moving past the outward aspects, and this was really admirable. She just needed to get in touch with her own true strength. Speaking of that strength, I was a little confused on several occasions because despite her established physical strength (I believe she even had a black belt in judo?), she sometimes just seemed to forget about that when she was cornered by someone. I mean, she could’ve easily shrugged them off or thrown them on the ground, we’ve seen her do it before. I guess her fear just took over in those scenes, but I just kept going like, ‘girl, you know you can just throw him over your shoulder!’ whenever this happened, lol.
But yeah, ultimately the story is really about Sara finding her inner strength and beauty and accepting herself fully as Geum Ran. She may have changed her face, but she never changed who she was and she didn’t have to because Geum Ran deserved love and happiness as much as anyone else. She deserved to live as herself without being needlessly ridiculed. I liked that they kept Sara’s relationship with herself as Geum Ran do apparent throughout the show, how she even had that conversation in the mirror with Geum Ran in which they were encouraging each other. It was a literal illustration of Sara coming to terms with her past and building her inner strength. It was nice that they kept the OG Geum Ran in for a while, not just as a flashback or picture, but as an actual presence within Sara and someone she still got to fall back on. I also liked that they devoted a part to making Tae Hee fall in love with Geum Ran rather than Sara, because I thought it was so powerful of Sara that she wanted to be loved for who she was inside, rather than for her new pretty face and nice body. I liked this part in particular because I remember thinking about this as well, whether Tae Hee did actually love her as Geum Ran, and whether he’d actually still be attracted to her if she’d had her old appearance. I liked that they addressed it, to also confront Tae Hee with his own possible prejudice, because it was entirely possible that he would still be less attracted to her had she still looked like Geum Ran. Random reference, but I remember also thinking this while I was watching Abyss, because I kept wondering if the main couple would’ve really fallen for each other if they’d still looked like their original selves, as their new forms were considered to be more attractive (at least in the male lead’s case). At least Birth of a Beauty made a point of addressing this, and I appreciated it because at some point I also needed confirmation from Tae Hee that he was not just one of many to fall for Sara’s appearance.
Some of my favorite Sara moments happened towards the end, when she was just plain DONE with Chae Yeon whenever the latter cornered her. Chae Yeon kept trying to intimidate her and at some point Sara was just looking at her like 😑, lol. I loved how she started standing up for herself, calling everyone out on how despicable they were being. She actually started voicing thoughts I’d had throughout the series, so that was really satisfying.
To make some general remarks about the story as a whole, as I mentioned in the beginning I was really curious to see how this story would be spread out over 21 episodes, especially because it took off so rapidly from the start. From the first episode on we dive head-first into the execution of the revenge plan and I was like, ‘OK yeah, bring it on, no dragging, love it!’ I couldn’t help make a reference to Fates and Furies, probably also because of Joo Sang Wook but also because it reminded me of how annoyed I was while watching it because the female lead’s ‘revenge plan’ there was so inconsistent and she didn’t even put in effort to gain intel on the person she was trying to get revenge on. In contrast, Sara and Tae Hee put in a lot of effort and they make a really great team. They even go so far as to wiretap Kang Joon’s bedroom to listen in on his (phone) conversations. It would sometimes take them a while to realize people were onto them or that they were being tricked themselves, but they never truly let their guard down. I was just glad that they waited for all the important pieces of evidence before going too far without any concrete proof. Learn from that, Goo Hae Ra!
I also thought it was interesting that the whole notion of ‘taking revenge’ was put into perspective depending on the character. While we are led to feel sympathetic towards Geum Ran’s reasons for wanting to take revenge, we are consequently also led to feel that Kang Joon and Chae Yeon don’t have any right to take revenge back. After all, they are the bad guys, they should get what they deserve. I was very aware of this while I was watching because I found it interesting that the story is constructed so that Chae Yeon isn’t deemed to be allowed to feel revengeful towards Sara because she brought it upon herself. Admittedly, I felt the exact same way, but it helped to at least be aware of the irony. Taking revenge on someone, no matter who it is or for what reason, is still something that’s considered to be ‘bad’. Depending on the situation it can be deemed to be fair or unfair, and that’s left up to the viewer. I just found it interesting to keep this in mind while watching this show.
What helped in condemning the ‘villains’ in this story is that none of the bad guys seemed to have a single ounce of remorse, or even the ability to self-reflect on what they’d done to deserve revenge from the people they’d hurt. Even in the case of Min Hyuk, who wasn’t part of Sara’s revenge plan, he also didn’t have a single shred of remorse in him when it came to inflicting damage on innocent people just to maintain his own reputation at the top. What I’m trying to say is that this show deals with very typical ‘good versus bad’ stereotypes, in which the bad guys are actually made out to be quite inhuman through their actions. It was established very clearly who was in the right and the wrong, and who deserved to be happy, and that was quite typical in itself.
Despite this typicalness, I did like that they added the meaningful emphasis on the main leads’ character development, and on Sara’s journey to fully accept her own inner strength and beauty. It just made the ending, in which every villain finally faces the consequences for their actions and receive appropriate punishment for it while Sara and Tae Hee can finally start preparing their wedding, that much more satisfying. I really liked how Sara summed up to Chae Yeon that the difference between the two of them lay in the fact that she (Sara) had owned up to her actions, including lying about her true identity, and asked for forgiveness, while Chae Yeon never admitted to what she’d done and never took any responsibility for any of the harm she caused other people. This just proves again how they put the whole thing in perspective, as people are inclined to show more empathy towards people who take responsibility for their actions and show remorse.
In terms of the main leads’ development in general, I think Tae Hee summarized that very neatly as that the most important thing they’d achieved through their revenge plan was that they’d made each other stronger and helped each other through the pain of their respective pasts. Sara stood by Tae Hee through his Broken Heart Syndrom while Tae Hee was always supportive of Sara’s decision and always made her feel like the special person she was.
Now that I’ve identified several things I liked about the show, I’d like to talk about some things that I found a little too typical, or that just didn’t add up or were badly written in my opinion. Of course, being aware that this is from 2014, I told myself beforehand that it was bound to get cheesy. It’s just something that’s inevitable in old-school K-Dramas. In hindsight, there weren’t that many tropes that annoyed me per se – I just had a strong dislike towards the second leads, as they were plain despicable people.
One of the main things that made me go 🤔 was the way in which Kang Joon found out Sara was Geum Ran. It was established from the get-go that Sara underwent an entire physical transformation, and that basically her entire body had been changed, from toenail to scalp. It was also mentioned that she’d gotten hair implants, and this seems obvious as Sara has entire different hair than Geum Ran did. Which means that her hair is not her own, or at least that it doesn’t contain Geum Ran’s DNA, right?. Because they’re implants, right? So can somebody please explain to me how the heck Kang Joon was able to get a DNA sample from her hair strands? Isn’t that actually a really big plothole? I don’t exactly remember the details about the hair extensions, but it would seem logical that they’re not bound to Geum Ran’s DNA, and there was at least one other comment under this episode that had the same thought, so I know I’m not alone 😂.
I also remember some lazy writing in the scene where Sara asks Kang Joon to drive her to the spot where he’d Geum Ran off the road, to see his reaction. What happens is that they make Kang Joon believe Geum Ran is still alive, and that she’s meeting him there, while Sara doesn’t know anything. Kang Joon gets out of the car at some point to get closer, after which he is hit on the back of the head by Sara and passes out on the road. When he wakes up, he is super confused about what happened in general, but also about what happened to Sara, as she was still in the car when he was knocked out. When he asks Sara about this the next time they meet, Sara literally goes for, ‘Oh you know, I’d just gone to the bathroom, and when I came back you were passed out on the road’. I mean. Even with his limited functioning brain cells, Kang Joon should’ve known that this didn’t make any sense. They were in the middle of a road, late at night, and she’d been inside the car when he got out. She couldn’t have gotten out to pee without him noticing (I’m still not sure how she got out of the car to sneak up on him and knock him out without him noticing, to be honest), and there certainly wasn’t any apparent bathroom facility nearby. All in all, this excuse just didn’t make any sense and I was kind of surprised Sara hadn’t prepared a better excuse, because it would’ve been more than logical if she’d seen something. Kang Joon was asking valid questions, admittedly. So yeah, either Sara really just didn’t think that one through (which kind of clashed with how discrete she’d been in the plan so far), or it was just lazy writing. In any case, Kang Joon didn’t even stop to think that that excuse wasn’t even applicable, he just went along with it.
Another scene that pissed me off because of it illogicalness was that petty trick from Chae Yeon to stop Sara and Tae Hee from going abroad to get married. She knew when they were supposed to leave, and then happened to ‘call in sick’ so that Sara would have to jump in for her program on the day of their flight. First of all, Sara wasn’t working there as a host, so asking her to fill in was already kind of weird, but the weirdest thing was that Chae Yeon literally came to see her to gloat the minute after the producer told her this. As in, the producer told her Chae Yeon had called in sick while Chae Yeon was literally standing there going, ‘oh oopsie, were you planning to go somewhere that day?’ And neither the producer or any other staff member was like, ‘hey, you’re not sick!’ It was so weird. And then even when Sara didn’t show up on the day she was supposed to fill in, Chae Yeon was also there, purely to add to people’s frustrations in going, 🐍’how irresponsible of Sara that she’s not here!’🐍 Like, did seriously no one stop to look at her and go, ‘yo, this all happened because you called in ‘sick’ and you’re clearly not, so you do it!’ I mean, everything Chae Yeon did was so obviously intended to ruin Sara’s reputation, all the backhanded comments and sassy remarks. It was just unrealistic how oblivious the rest of the staff members were.
I think I’ve already established that Chae Yeon was my least favorite character in this show, but I want to elaborate on it a little further. The main thing that annoyed me about her was how she was so incapable of self-reflection. Even after experiencing the exact same situation she herself inflicted on Geum Ran, she never stopped to think, ‘oh my god, is this how I made Geum Ran/another woman feel? Is this what it must’ve been like for her?’ Nope, she just went, ‘Geum Ran ruined my life and now she deserves to suffer’. Girl, this wouldn’t even have happened if you hadn’t felt the need to get involved with Kang Joon in the first place. By then she knew for herself what a scumbag he was, so I just couldn’t understand how, until the very end, she could never bring herself to even feel the slightest bit of remorse towards Geum Ran. Even when Sara came to her in an attempt to get her support because Tae Hee was in danger, someone they both cared about, she just wouldn’t budge.
The ways in which she tried to bring Sara down were such low blows, as well. I mean, come on, the peanut allergy thing? Sometimes it was like she just wanted to play a prank without considering the dangerous consequences. The fact that she would find pleasure in seeing Sara choke to death or succumb to an allergic reaction, just because it proved that she was Geum Ran, just made her such a witch. I actually called her Snake Chae Yeon throughout the show because of manipulative tendencies and because she was so fake. She basically switched personalities in every scene she appeared in, from fake-worried and caring towards Mrs. Park, pretending to care about Tae Hee’s wellbeing and that Sara had a bad influence on him, to fake-crying about how Kang Joon cheated on her and cornering Sara to gloat because she knew who she really was and that made her invincible. She could only see how she was made into a victim of everything, she never once stopped to think about what she did to deserve it. It was sickening how she started manipulating Mrs. Park, acting like she was so invested in Winner Group’s success and all that. Honestly, I was hoping for a scene in which Mrs. Park learned about how Chae Yeon had just been trying to poison her against Sara while she only did it for personal gain – she was only ever looking for someone who could get her to the top. She didn’t care whether it was Kang Joon or Tae Hee, although I did find it kind of surprising that she would even use Tae Hee’s feelings for her against him, as they’d been so close. The way she started clinging onto him, thinking he’d always choose her over Sara while he was already way over his romantic feelings for her was kind of laughable. I loved that scene where she called him out, pretending to be lost or sick or something, and he just left his secretary with her after making sure she was okay. So much for your plan to get him away from Sara! She even already texted Sara like, ‘Tae Hee is with me, you should stop waiting for him’, it was so childish and lame. I can’t deny I kind of relished in the despair on her face after Sara outed her on her own talkshow and she had nothing to fall back on anymore. It was wild how even after she lost everything and it finally seemed like she had to give it to Sara, she was still too cowardly to face up to her actions, and even to face Sara personally to return the building she’d stolen from her.
In terms of most-hated characters, Kang Joon comes in as a close second after Chae Yeon. Just like any villain character in this show, Kang Joon seemed to have no conscience whatsoever. Admittedly I found it kind of comical how, after getting rid of Geum Ran and going through all that trouble to get with Chae Yeon, he literally pulled the exact same thing on her with Sara, a mere week later. He was definitely a creature of habit, in the worst sense. He literally turned his back on Chae Yeon the second he laid eyes on Sara, and it only took a couple of days for him to tell Sara he loved her. He just blatantly started having another affair under the eyes of his freshly new wife, it was so typical.
What made Kang Joon so creepy was that, besides just being a jerk, he actually started stalking Sara after he found out she was Geum Ran, suddenly being all, ‘You’re still legally my wife, I’m not letting you go’. Like, why would you cling onto her after first trying to kill her? What reason could you possibly have for that? The sickest thing was that he would keep visiting Sara at her house and work, cornering her and actually say stuff like, ‘I wouldn’t mind being married to you and living with you again now that you look like this.’ Seriously, 🤮🤮🤮, what a disgusting creep. I’m also still baffled by the fact that he actually got Geum Ran’s mother forcibly admitted to a mental hospital when he suspected she may be behind the text messages he started receiving from Geum Ran. Seriously, it should not even occur to you that this frail lady, who’s just trying to mourn the sudden loss of her daughter, would actually do something like that. He physically threatened her outside of her house and then just had her kidnapped like that, what the actual fuck. Besides from being cruel, it was also so meaningless. Besides the occasional threats and intimidations towards Geum Ran and her mother, at some point he really didn’t have that much going for him anymore. After his family learned about his involvement in Geum Ran’s ‘death’ and they knew that he was even being blackmailed by Chae Yeon because she had the blackbox footage, no one really supported him anymore. He just started conspiring with Min Hyuk to still feel like he had some power in bringing Sara and Tae Hee down, but it all resulted in his own downfall. I mean, come on, he actually believed Tae Hee would help him leave the country by giving him a legit false passport? It was really satisfying to see him get cornered at the airport like that. Just like Chae Yeon, he just couldn’t bring himself to reflect on the despicable things he’d done, and how he deserved to be locked up. In his mind, he was the one being wronged, never the other way around. He and Chae Yeon might have actually been a match made in hell, seeing as their ways of thinking were so similar.
Looking at Kang Joon’s family, it’s not really a surprise where he got his limited amount of brain cells from – his mother and sisters definitely weren’t the sharpest tools in the box either. It’s a pity no one really took after his father, because he was undoubtedly the most decent of the bunch. I honestly didn’t even care about his aggressive tendencies, because what mattered most was that he cared about Geum Ran and was prepared to condemn his family members rather than hush things up in order to protect them. I think what said a lot about what kind of person he was really was lay in the fact that he knew the least of what was going on, but still was the first person to go and apologize to Geum Ran’s mother. When he found out in the final episode that Sara had been Geum Ran all this time, he literally cried as he was telling that he wished her all the happiness in the world, that was so touching. His abundance of sincerity stood in such stark contrast with the selfish and insincere way in which his wife and daughters came crawling. They just came to ask Sara for forgiveness to feel better about themselves, and also to beg her to not reveal the part Kang Joon had played in her attempted murder (again, ✨the audacity✨).
To be fair, I did feel like mother-in-law had the most sincere reaction when Kang Joon told her Sara was Geum Ran. She actually said, ‘Oh my goodness, imagine how miserable Sara must have been hearing us talk about Geum Ran like that all this time’. I mean, at least that sounded kind of reflective. If they hadn’t added the topic of redeeming Kang Joon in their apologies, I may have even redeemed them a little bit, but unfortunately that was not the case. It reminded me of that backhanded apology from Crash Course in Romance, where those women only came to ask the female lead for forgiveness so that she’d put in a good word for their kids with the math teacher. I was really proud of Sara for sitting there like 😒, calling them out on their BS before walking away. They weren’t even worthy of redemption, not after how they treated her and her mother. The way Min Young kept calling her ‘Pig Sister-in-law’ even after she died AND after they knew she was still alive. The way they literally threw Geum Ran’s mother on the street and poured water on her so she’d stop asking questions about what they’d done to her daughter. When father-in-law found out they’d done all that to his old friend he got SO mad – I honestly don’t understand how he could live with those pigheads. I could understand why he preferred to be out of the house so much though, lol.
Speaking of Geum Ran’s mother, I felt for her so much. After losing her daughter overnight, she also had to deal with her awful in-laws who just came at her while she just wanted to know what had happened to her daughter. She didn’t even know about Kang Joon’s cheating, so she really came to them without knowing anything, and she had all the right in the world to know what was going on. I’m glad at least father-in-law was sympathetic towards her. It was nice to see a softer side of him behind his stern exterior. I felt like he was nicer to Geum Ran’s mom than he was to his own wife, lol. In any case, I really loved Geum Ran’s mother because despite being a frail lady who didn’t have the power to force people to tell her the truth, she remained so strong. Even after discovering that Sara was her daughter, she never even went to confront her about it. She was prepared to just watch her evolve into this new person and find a happy life from a distance, but when Sara came to her in times of need, she always welcomed her without hesitation. Even after being physically threatened by Kang Joon herself, she still had the strength to stand up to him whenever he suddenly appeared in front of them again. She was remarkable, and it was clear as day where Geum Ran got her inner strength from.
Honestly, and this might be a bit mean to say, but I wouldn’t really have missed Kyung Joo in the whole thing. Like, it was nice that Geum Ran had one solid friend (although we never saw them spend time together when Geum Ran was still herself, she was only introduced after she transformed into Sara), and that she stuck with Yeo Ok after Geum Ran had disappeared, but I didn’t really feel like she contributed that much to the story. I just found her to be a bit ditzy and very oblivious to what was happening around her. Maybe it also had to do with the actress’ acting, because she was just very dramatic in her expressions. Whenever she learned some new information, for example that Geum Ran was still alive, she’d just go, ‘WHAT?? 😲😲😲’ in this exaggerated and almost comical way, and I couldn’t really feel any depth from her. Even in the final episode, when she just blurted out to Sara that she also wanted to get full-body plastic surgery, I just found it kind of insensitive of her as she didn’t even think about how much Sara had had to endure because of her physical transformation, and how she was still fearful of any symptoms she may get from the drastic changes made to her body. She just didn’t really add anything significant to the story in my opinion, sorry.
On the other hand, someone who I thought did contribute to the story despite his minor role was Ji Hoon. I still find it a bit vague how exactly he was pulled into Sara’s surgery by Tae Hee, because he recognized Geum Ran by name and face as the patient but he only knew that he had to keep it a secret and he didn’t even know that she was now Sara? He must have seen the end result of the surgery before he bandaged her face, right? I found it a bit hard to gauge how much he knew, but I guess he wasn’t aware of the severity of the secret because he gave it away quite easily to Chae Yeon.
In any case, I did sympathize with him because, even though he remained mostly on Chae Yeon’s side, he did acknowledge how much Tae Hee and Sara started caring for each other. He was definitely one of the people that was being manipulated by Chae Yeon’s self-victimization, and I couldn’t blame him for standing up for his family. But at least he had a conscience, and I think it said a lot about him as well when he allowed Sara to visit Tae Hee in the hospital after Mrs. Park had sent her away. I liked how he sat next to her on that bench and was like, ‘You know, I still can’t approve of you, but everyone’s gone so you can go see him now’. Just like Mrs. Park, he only asked Sara to stay away from Tae Hee because Chae Yeon had made him believe that she had been lying about her identity. He didn’t even know she was the person he’d operated on by then, so it was all kind of messed up. In any case, Ji Hoon was just trying to look out for his family and was therefore wary of anyone who could possibly harm them, and that’s a valid thing. What made me sympathize with him even more was that he did condemn Chae Yeon after he found out she’d been an accomplice in Geum Ran’s accident all along, and I liked how he told her she needed to own up to her own actions and come clean to Sara personally. When all was well and Sara and Tae Hee got married, he did seem to enjoy seeing his brother so genuinely happy, so that was good.
As badass as I’d hoped Mrs. Park to be, I really would’ve liked her to have a better nose for untrustworthy people, and with that I specifically mean Chae Yeon and Kim Joon Chul. She already had Min Hyuk and his mother on the radar, for good reason, but she could’ve been more alert to people who had lesser obvious motives to interfere with her family. Even while she didn’t trust Min Hyuk and Ji Sook, she still let herself be surprised time and time again when they’d actually go another step further, and that just proved to me that her dislike of them didn’t reach to actually suspecting them to be capable of such atrocities. As someone of her position, I also found it very strange that she let Chae Yeon in like that while she didn’t even know her. Chae Yeon just appeared out of nowhere in the room where she was basically being held by Min Hyuk and Ji Sook and she didn’t even wonder how she got in there and what she came for. Chae Yeon only introduced herself as the person Tae Hee grew up with, and that was enough for her to trust her, and it was also weird that she believed her hisses about Sara so easily while Sara was literally the person who reunited her with her long lost grandson. I just found it peculiar that, even within her position as someone who constantly had to watch her back because her own family could betray her at any moment, she just decided to trust Chae Yeon blindly and didn’t even think to consider she might have something to gain from spreading negative rumors about Sara. As I said, I just wanted Mrs. Park to find out about how Chae Yeon had been manipulating her, because Chae Yeon deserved a slap in the face.
I’m glad at least Kim Joon Chul came clean about his actions, how he literally went on his knees before Mrs. Park and even personally led the police to Ji Sook to get her arrested. No matter how awful the things he did were, at least his conscience caught up with him when Min Hyuk asked him to recreate that warehouse explosion to kill Tae Hee. The entire time I had such mixed feelings about him, how he could even stand next to Mrs. Park after killing her son and daughter-in-law, but I guess it really must’ve eaten him up to some extent. Admittedly, he only abandoned Ji Sook after confirming that she didn’t really care about what would happen to him, so there was definitely an element of loss in personal gain from the situation, but in the end I was just glad he decided not to do it, also because it was just so meaningless.
Now that I’ve discussed all the main and important side character in more detail, I just want to say something about the romantic relationship between Sara and Tae Hee. Now that I think of it, I guess it’s safe to say that besides them, there wasn’t a single other couple in this series that had an unproblematic relationship, lol. Of course, Sara and Tae Hee also had their fair share of turbulation, but at least they always found their way back to each other.
To be fair, even though I really liked their dynamic when they started out as a team and the whole ‘growing stronger together’ idea is really wonderful, I still think their relationship left several things to be desired. First of all, in terms of passion. As far as physical intimacy goes, although there are some hugs, it doesn’t really go much further than one kiss in episode 10, when they first confirm their feelings for each other. The kiss itself, although it was undeniably sweet, is still quite dry and static – they move towards each other very slowly until they just stand there pressing lips together. I mean, it’s what’s to be expected of an old-school K-Drama, but I still found it a pity that they didn’t really move beyond that level of intimacy. On the contrary, when they officially get together they’re like two giddy teenagers holding hands. Throughout the series their love language mainly consisted of staring and smiling and giving each other words of affirmation. Also, I just didn’t vibe with the whole name-calling of ‘Ahjumma’ and ‘Doctor’, I just didn’t find it romantic😬. I feel like Tae Hee’s personality also changed completely after he finally accepted his true feelings for Sara. He went from a super tsundere who kept denying the possibility of his attraction to her to an over-excited puppy dog who stepped on the accelerator. He immediately went ahead to think of marriage and children without considering Sara’s negative association regarding her previous marriage. It was more than logical for her to consider very carefully whether she wanted to get married again, but he just assumed she didn’t have any doubt and pushed that proposal on her. Even though the fact she didn’t want to get married again wasn’t the real reason for her breaking up with Tae Hee, I was proud of her for setting a boundary because with or without the break-up, it was way too fast and they were still in the middle of a really messy situation. Their first marriage plans had a really weird timing, so it was for the better that they waited until everything was settled. In any case, I thought it was very brave of Sara to, despite her actual willingness to marry Tae Hee, still give herself some more time. Also, despite the fact that Sara didn’t communicate to him properly about the true reason for the break-up, I still feel like Tae Hee could’ve guessed what caused her to do it. He may not have been aware of the fact that a lot of people had been pushing her to stay away from him, but come on, he could’ve easily just asked Chae Yeon or Mrs. Park if they’d said anything. It was obvious from Chae Yeon’s reaction to the break-up that she benefitted from it, I mean, the way she just suddenly started clinging onto him after they broke up and used the opportunity to talk even more smack about Sara should’ve been enough proof that she had something to do with it. Mrs. Park and Ji Hoon would’ve probably just told him the truth that they’d indeed talked to Sara and asked her to break up with him. He could’ve gotten the information literally from anyone, but still he decided to mope all by himself. That was a bit immature of him, and also how he immediately condemned Sara when Min Hyuk, his enemy of all people, started using her against him. There were just a lot of things that made me feel like their trust in each other wasn’t actually that solid. Tae Hee was moving way too fast and needed to slow down, and although it was a bit frustrating at some point, I’m still glad he got the time to work it out by himself, because when they were finally able to get together again, they’d grown even stronger once more.
I still think I liked them best when they just started out as a team, because their dynamic was so fun and I loved how, despite the fact they didn’t even know each other that well, they just immediately leaned on each other and backed each other up. They got along so effortlessly and that was really nice to see. Of course we know from the start that they’re going to fall for each other and it was sweet when they finally got married, but all in all I still would’ve liked to see a bit more feeling from their romance rather than just words to prove it. At least the part where Tae Hee was put under hypnosis to see Sara as Geum Ran and was forced to fall for her first before he could see Sara’s new looks again was one thing that helped in creating a bit more credibility in his true attraction to her, but I personally would’ve liked a bit more passion in terms of physical intimacy🤷🏻♀️.
As I’ve now reached the end of my main analysis, I just want to comment on a couple more practical details before moving on to my cast comments. First of all, the catchy music. I particularly liked the title track song ‘She’ by Jonghyun (🙏🏻may he Rest in Peace🙏🏻), as it just fit the scenes it was used in so well. I vibed each time the line ‘Oh I’m in lo~ove with you’ came on, haha. I also liked the song ‘Dazzling’ by Lee Hae Na. The ballads that were used were properly dramatic, and I just liked the general sound of the OST.
Regarding the series’ title itself, I liked that they kept it as a reference to the story. Sara wins a cooking competition called ‘Birth of a Chef’ at some point, and I believe there’s a few more uses of the word pun in the rest of the series as well, even with regards to Tae Hee. Besides it being the literal English translation of the Korean title, I just liked how well it fitted the entire story and also referred to an expression used in the series.
Time for the cast comments! This might be a lesser positive section, as I wasn’t that impressed by the acting overall (🥲) but I still want to go over some people because I knew the majority of the cast and I just like making comments 😌.
Starting on a positive note with the OG Geum Ran, Ha Jae Sook. I’ve seen her once before in My Absolute Boyfriend and I even believe she was my favorite character there. Honestly, #JusticeForOGSaGeumRan. I really loved her. She was such a sweetheart and deserved so much better. I actually found it a pity that we didn’t get to know her a bit better the way she was before she turned into Sara, also because now I found it hard to gauge whether Sara really kept all of Geum Ran’s mannerisms and stuff. It’s through Sara that we learn about her background in judo and how she always sang trot songs, and I wish we’d at least gotten to see a bit more of those habits so we as viewers could clearly recognize them in Sara. I did like that they kept her in the show as more than just a flashback, but that she appeared in that mirror scene and when Tae Hee was hypnotized to see her as what she used to look like. I would’ve liked to see more of that, even, but this sufficed. At least it was clear enough that Sara still fell back on her at times, and that the reference to OG Geum Ran played an important part in Sara’s journey to accept herself for who she really was. Ha Jae Sook was absolutely lovely in this, she gave off such a warm and loving energy. I liked to see her in this and I enjoyed her performance.
I’ve seen Han Ye Seul before in Madame Antoine (which I loved) and 20th Century Boy and Girl (which I found incredibly boring). I don’t want to sound mean, but the thing I always have with her is that I feel like she’s casted a lot for her looks. As in, when they need a character to play a model, or just someone who is defined as being ‘particularly’ visually attractive, they go for her. At least that’s the impression I’ve gotten from what I’ve seen from her so far. Don’t get me wrong, I know she’s a good actress because she really delivered in Madame Antoine, but for the rest I guess I’ve only seen her in things where her character was led first and foremost by her looks. She was casted as an attractive person, and I still need some persuasion to really appreciate her for her acting skills. If someone has a recommendation of a drama with her where she does act beyond her looks, please let me know, because I really want to see more variety from her. No hard feelings towards the actress whatsoever, I’m just stating my opinion based on what I’ve seen of her so far. In any case, while there were moments where I really enjoyed her quirkiness, there were also moments where I thought she became a bit stiff or awkward. As I mentioned in the above comments about OG Geum Ran, I just didn’t get a clear enough impression of OG Geum Ran’s original personality to be able to determine if Sara proceeded to replicate her exact habits. It was like we got to know everything there was to know about how she’d always been through Sara rather than through OG Geum Ran. So yeah, the typical ahjumma habits, the humming of trots songs, the quirky head-in-neck out-loud-laughing was fun and all, but I just had to assume that those were things Geum Ran used to do. I would’ve liked to get a clearer transition from Geum Ran to Sara in terms of mannerisms to get the image that she was really the same person in a different body. I hope I’m explaining it clearly enough, haha.
By the way, I just saw an article on MDL announcing Han Ye Seul’s possible return in a drama series after a four-year hiatus. Her last project was from 2019, so I wonder what she’s been up to. I wish that I could see more from her, but I’m unlikely to dig deeper than 2014 and I’ve seen her most recent stuff, so I guess I’ll just have to wait until something new comes out. Anyways, to sum it up: while I thought she was probably the ideal casting choice for Sara in terms of visuals, I still would’ve liked to get a bit more depth in her acting. But all in all, she did well.
I’ve seen Joo Sang Wook before in Fantastic and Fates and Furies, as mentioned. I feel like his performance of Tae Hee may have come closer to his character in Fantastic, because I remember him being kind of eccentric there as well. I definitely appreciated the goofiness with which he played Tae Hee because it was such a stark contrast with his melancholical character in F&F, which is what I remember him most clearly from. However, sometimes I feel like he gives off a bit of a forced impression, that he tries to be funny rather than that his acting comes from within. Just like with Han Ye Seul, I really want to see more variety in his acting. I know I at least have one more drama of him on my list (Touch), so hopefully that’ll be a nice addition to my references. All in all, it was nice to see him as a more eccentric character. Before we find out he’s the heir of Winner Group he’s kind of an enigma, and I also wondered why he was pretending to be a doctor to Sara. Even after he’d confessed he wasn’t a doctor, Sara kept calling him ‘Doctor’, which I kept finding kind of weird because it just didn’t seemed a bit random.
As I mentioned earlier, I was a bit disappointed in the main leads’ (passionate) chemistry, but I still liked the dynamic between Tae Hee and Sara, especially in the beginning when they teamed up for the first time. They were like a comedy duo and it was very entertaining to see them start out all awkwardly and then become more confident in their tactics throughout the series. My favorite moment was definitely when he walked into that shareholders’ meeting in the final episode while Min Hyuk thought he’d been killed and was just like, ‘hiya, let’s just do that voting thing again, shall we?’ 👌🏻 I liked seeing him as a more energetic character from him, I hope to see more of him in the future.
It’s funny because the second the relationship between Geum Ran and Kang Joon was established, I found myself thinking that they reminded me of Oh My Venus, where the guy dumped his long-term girlfriend because she was fat. And then I realized that Jung Gyeo Woon was actually played that guy as well! No wonder he seemed so familiar, he was basically the same character in a different font, lol. (By the way, not me just realizing that Oh My Venus is from 2015 and came out just one year after BoaB 🙉 why does OMV feel like a much more recent drama?) Anyways, apparently he also appeared in God’s Gift – 14 Days, but it’s been too long for me to remember. I sure hope he also gets casted as friendly people every once in a while! It seems like he’s typically casted as the jerk second male lead, lol. Admittedly, he was very convincing as Scumbag Kang Joon, I think this is probably the most intimidated I’ve been by him so far. He really started creeping me out at some point. It feels as though I haven’t seen him appear in much recently, and after checking I see that his last project was from 2017, so I’m not sure if he’s still all that active 🤔. I wonder if I’ll ever get to see him as a nice person in a drama, I’m really curious as to what vibe he’ll give off with a different energy!
I thought I didn’t recognize Wang Ji Hye, but apparently she was also the second female lead in Personal Preference. It’s been a very long time since I’ve seen that, but I do have a vague memory of the second female lead, and in particular her manic psycho eyes, lol. I guess that must have been her, indeed! 🙉 So yeah, I have very few nice things to say about her character, as I’ve established elaborately in my review, but I have to give the actress some credit for making me loathe Chae Yeon so much. I’m not sure if it was even the writers’ intention to make the viewers feel sorry for Chae Yeon at some point, but I don’t feel like that was the case. It wasn’t for me, anyway. While I always like to compliment actors who play bad guys successfully, I did sometimes get a bit annoyed by her acting. She was laying it on real thick with her manic eyes and grins to emphasize her twistedness and she could’ve done with less. She would’ve probably been more unpredictable and intimidating if she’d kept on a poker face, for example. Anyways, I see she’s been actively doing projects up to 2021 so far, so maybe I’ll get to see her in something else in the future. I just want to see her as a friendly character for a change, lol.
I’ve seen Han Sang Jin before in Hyde, Jekyll, Me and Circle, and I know I liked these shows but I don’t remember him from either of them because it’s been too long. You can clearly see what happens if I don’t write reviews about shows, they just kind of appear into the abyss of distant memories, lol. I see on MDL that he’s also in at least one other show that’s coming up on my list, so hopefully I’ll get to see another side of his acting. I have the feeling that I didn’t see him as a villain before, because I instinctively didn’t associate him with an evil character, which is a good thing, I guess. Min Hyuk was definitely a very intensely layered character, although I still don’t completely understand where his personal greed came from, if it wasn’t solely the influence of his mother. He was ostracized by his father’s family for being an illegitimate child, but was that really a reason to start killing people? His intentions were definitely problematic, and I also felt like his crush on Sara only complicated things. His infatuation with her made an even bigger mess of his already twisted plan to take over Winner Group. It was so gratifying to see all those board members turn against him during that final shareholders’ meeting, and to see him glare at Tae Hee while he was being dragged away by the police👌🏻I think he showed a nice variety of sides to his acting, from the friendly face he used exclusively for Sara to the gob he pulled whenever Tae Hee came into his line of vision. I think with this role he’s showed more than I’ve seen in other roles of him so far, so that was nice.
It took me a moment to realize that In Gyo Jin was actually pretty handsome when he was younger, lol. The only other dramas I’ve seen him in, at least the ones I wrote reviews about, feature him as a kind of perverted middle-aged man, and I think this was the first time I saw something in which he didn’t play a comic relief character. He really impressed me with Ji Hoon’s calm and sober personality because it showed a side of his acting I hadn’t seen before. I know him from Sassy Go Go, Jugglers (oh GOD, I remember his character in Jugglers 🫥) and most recently in Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha. I really liked seeing him here, I thought Ji Hoon was one of those characters who existed in-between the chaos, and it was necessary to have someone like him there to add some balance to the scale. Although he wasn’t particularly supportive of Tae Hee and Sara’s relationship, he never became as petty as his sister. He had to see both sides of a situation before he would judge it, and I’m not even mad at him for instinctively sticking with his family. I think he was probably the only person who’d remain on Chae Yeon’s side after everyone left her, and I dearly hope Chae Yeon is also aware of that. I liked his performance.
I feel like I’ve seen Han Jin Hee in a whole bunch of things, but apparently I only know him from I Miss You and High Schooler King of Life. In any case, he’s a familiar face and because he has such a typically stern exterior and expression, I liked seeing a more gentle side of him as Kang Joon’s father. At least not his entire family was a chaos pit. He definitely touched me the most in the final episode when he told Sara with tears in his eyes how sorry he was and how much he hoped she would be happy. If that wasn’t the epitome of sincerity, I don’t know what was. It may have been the most sincere thing anyone said in the entire series. It’s always nice to see a side of certain actors I haven’t seen before, and I really liked him in this show for being one of the few decent people with a normal conscience.
I just discovered Kim Young Ae died of pancreatic cancer in 2017, three years after this show came out. She was only 66. She’d been appearing in dramas and movies ever since the 70s, and her last project stems from 2016. I’ve seen her before in The Moon That Embraces The Sun (as the Queen Dowager), Kill Me, Heal Me (as the ML’s grandmother) and Doctors (as the FL’s grandmother). While her character as Kang Joon’s mother was of course nowhere near decent, I did think she made the most out of portraying her. I can imagine that it can be kind of fun to play a character on the bad side. I did get the impression that she had a good time pretending to be so dramatic, constantly going, ‘Oh, my head, my poor head’ whenever new and damaging information about Kang Joon came forward. While she still only came to ask Sara for forgiveness with the wrong intentions, I was surprised that her first reaction to learning that Sara was Geum Ran wasn’t something like, ‘So she tricked us this whole time, how dare she!’ She didn’t pin it back on her like Kang Joon and Chae Yeon did, she actually made a reflective comment on how hard it must’ve been for her, and that surprised me. I wonder what kind of person mother-in-law really was behind her marriage, because I didn’t really understand how she and father-in-law had ever been in love with each other, lol. So yeah, her character was definitely not that sympathetic, but I’d like to think she had fun with it. May she Rest in Peace 🙏🏻
I’ve only seen Kim Chung before in Cinderella’s Sister, but it feels like a decade since I’ve watched that so I don’t remember her. To be completely honest, I didn’t like her acting at all. She was doing too much with her facial expressions and too little with her acting skills. It just felt like she pasted it on too much without truly feeling what she was supposed to convey, and that’s kind of risky when you’re also playing a villain character for which people will already have less sympathy. That was the case for me, anyways. Maybe I’ll see some other drama with her in the future where she delivers a more notable performance, but what she did in this show just wasn’t it for me. Then again, this is my only reference of her, she’s been doing dramas and movies since the 80s, so I’m sure this isn’t all there is to her acting.
I’ve seen Lee Jong Nam before in My Girlfriend is a Nine-Tailed Fox and Mask. As I said in my review, Geum Ran’s mother or Shim Yeo Ok to use her full character name, was possibly one of my favorite characters. She was just so steady, even through all the threats she received and the things she was made to endure at Kang Joon’s hands. She was so strong. I wish there could have been some scenes between her and OG Geum Ran in the beginning, I wanted to see their mother-daughter dynamic, because even after she and Sara were reunited, they never even hugged or showed any kind of deep bond, even though they were very close as I understood. There was that cute photo of OG Geum Ran and her mother at a judo game, but I didn’t really know how Geum Ran’s relationship with her mother was, and this also couldn’t be established right away after she transformed into Sara, as she only kept watching her mother from a distance. I don’t know, I would’ve liked to see a bit more mother-daughter bonding, I guess. I did love the scene where Kang Joon visited Sara at that restaurant where she’d disappeared to, and her mother came in to shoo him away. Even when the last time she’d seen him, he’d threatened her and put her in a mental hospital, she still didn’t back away from him in order to protect her daughter, and that was amazing. I really liked her performance, she was the best mom to Geum Ran.
I’ve seen Shim Yi Young before in Mary Stayed Out All Night, Legend of the Blue Sea, Thirty But Seventeen, Fates and Furies (👀) and Love Alarm, and there’s some more dramas with her on my watchlist. I’ve already mentioned in my review that I didn’t really think she was that much of an important character, and I also had some difficulty with her acting, to be honest. It just felt like she was trying really hard to play a ditzy, carefree person and it just kind of clashed with the rest of the characters? I’m not really sure how to explain it. I just felt like her acting was too exaggerated and the fact that they ended with her telling Sara she also wanted surgery was kind of inappropriate, lol. It just felt like she had no idea what Sara had gone through, despite allegedly being her closest friend. Here again, I would’ve liked to see some scenes between her and OG Geum Ran to establish their friendship, because I didn’t really feel a best friend connection between her and Sara, even after they were reunited. I know she can do better because I’ve seen her in more things, so I guess this was just a starting phase and she’s been improving her acting a lot since then.
I haven’t seen anything with Kim Yong Rim, aka Mrs. Park, but I had the same kind of opinion as with a couple of other actors’ performances in this series. While I liked Mrs. Park’s character in itself, I did feel like she sometimes overacted a bit with pulling grumpy faces and making grunting sounds when she was displeased (which was often). I would’ve liked her to be a bit more alert to people that might approach her for personal gain, such as Chae Yeon. It just didn’t make sense to me why her character would just let a stranger in and believe everything they say without considering the option that they might be out for something. I’m curious to see more sides of her acting, as I’m sure she’s done a lot, so hopefully I’ll see more of her acting in future watches.
It took me longer than a day (again) to properly structure my review, but at least I managed to add everything I wanted to say. All in all, it was definitely not the best show I’ve watch in terms of quality, but for an old-school K-Drama I still found it quite entertaining. Sometimes cringy acting and sloppy writing are just part of the deal, and I wasn’t even bothered that much by the stylistic inconsistencies. My frustration primarily went to the villain characters, which is pretty much the point, I guess. Apart from that I thought it was really nice that the writers included the meaningful layer of Geum Ran/Sara’s character development and that they focussed on getting her and Tae Hee to help each other heal and fully accept themselves before they could be truly happy together. I’m glad I gave this show a chance, despite everything I was invested in the story and I found the ending extremely gratifying. Not gonna lie, I was literally clapping throughout the final episode because it was so 👏🏻 freaking 👏🏻 satisfying 👏🏻 how all the bad guys finally got what they deserved. It was definitely a better revenge story than F&F (yes, I’m gonna keep saying it). The thing with revenge plots is that they sometimes get pretty dark and intense when you dive into the revenge-taker’s mind, as we also saw for example in Itaewon Class. Birth of a Beauty however, manages to keep its tone light, while never diminishing the effect the revenge plot has on everyone. I liked that throughout the revenge being executed, there were so many funny and sweet moment to balance it out. The whole preface of a woman who changes her appearance to get back at her unfaithful husband and his mistress may be quite extreme, but they never made it into a comedy act or something not to be taken seriously. This was also reflected in Sara reflecting on the physical consequences her plastic surgeries could possibly inflict on her later on. I think they managed to maintain the balance between the light and the more heavy stuff very well.
Apart from the satisfaction of the final episode in terms of justice finally being served, I also think a lot of the main messages from the story were conveyed through this final bit. For example, when Kyung Joo asked Sara about why she thought the people had embraced her even after she admitted to lying about her true identity, Sara said that she thought it must be because there are so many people who are able to relate to Geum Ran’s pain. It’s funny how the main female lead, the tragic heroine who was the biggest victim of all, never started acting like a victim in the way Chae Yeon did, for example. It just really put things in perspective, and that’s also why I feel like Geum Ran is a really iconic lead female character. She went to hell and back but only came out stronger, but inside and out, and managed to pave the way for her own happy ending, all by herself. We can definitely learn from her!
As the end of the year draws near (hey, that rhymes), I think I’m going to watch some shorter (Netflix) shows to get into a more relaxed mood. I hope I’ll be able to upload a couple more reviews before the year ends, but I’m not going to rush anything. You’ll see it when it appears! Thanks again for reading this all the way through, I hope my efforts paid off in restructuring and rewriting it.
Well then, until next time!
Bye-bee! x
